Baker

By Reid Matthias

When the Amicable grain elevator explodes, the town is left in shock and disbelief as their livelihoods are threatened. In order for the town to recover, the elevator's damage must be assessed by Baker Insurance and their lead investigator, Stedman Boswell. As the cocky, young insurance adjustor drives his Porsche into Amicable, Leo Jensen, a bu

• Language: English
• Publisher: Reid Matthias
• Release date: Jul 15, 2021
• ISBN: 9780645047233

Reid Matthias

Reid Matthias is a keen observer of human nature and enjoys studying the finer details of humanity's response to life and putting it in stories. Reid and his wife, Christine, live in South Australia with their three amazing daughters, Elsa, Josephine and Greta.

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Baker

Book 2 of the Amicable Circle

By Reid Matthias

A13 logo

Copyright © Reid Matthias 2021

All rights reserved. Other than for the purposes and subject to the conditions prescribed under the Copyright Act, no part of this publication may be reproduced, stored in a retrieval system, or transmitted in any form or by any means, electronic, mechanical, photocopying, recording or otherwise, without the prior permission of the publisher.

ISBN - paperback: 978-0-6450472-2-6 / ebook: 978-0-6450472-3-3

This edition first published by A13 in July 2021

Typesetting by Ben Morton

Publication assistance from Immortalise

Back cover Photo by Natalie Kuhl on Unsplash Front cover Photo by Sneha Cecil on Unsplash

Acknowledgements

For my grandparents, salt and pepper of the earth people, who brought about so many opportunities to rejoice in sharing life across generations: Elmer and Delores Matthias, Victor and Leota Nacke – such delightful old-fashioned names with beautiful hearts who never got old…

Baker, like its predecessor, Butcher, is a work of fiction. Some of the place names are real, but Amicable is not. Although its geography and layout may seem to be familiar, at least to many who live in small Iowa towns, Amicable is a figment of my memory. It is situated nowhere near the Boondocks and not even close to Gravity. All characters are composites and exaggerations of my imagination, but any bearing more than a passing resemblance to real life people is unintentional, albeit welcomed. I have borrowed surnames and Christian names from people I have encountered throughout my travels - good and lovely people - and I hope that you who read these pages can connect with them as I have.

A special thanks to my incredible wife Christine who continues to amaze me with the generosity of her joy at reading these books. As she has read and reread the Amicable Circle, her editing skills and eye for details have been extraordinary. To Elsa, Josephine and Greta, my daughters and constant source of love and amusement, thank you for pushing these Amicableans onto the page. To Anji Neil, as always, a woman with an amazing editing eye, thank you.

And to Cees Wesselingh, the original butcher, who helped me find stories in the unlikeliest places.

Prologue

My Dearest Reader,

Hopefully you are perched in your favorite reading chair, reading glasses (or not) clinging to the end of your nose as you prepare to thumb through another episode of my dear hometown of Amicable. I also hope that there is a bottomless pot of coffee brewing on your countertop, bubbling and hissing an endless scent of caffeinated imaginations, allowing you to read, pause, sip, pause, and read again.

The last time we crossed paths was six years ago. Much has happened in this time, not just in my own life – married with children, invested in the life of working with my husband John Thomas and his role in the church and community – but also throughout Amicable.

You would remember our good friend Leo Jensen, Butcher, his wife, Rhonda (and now their children). His arrival signaled a new perspective for us Amicableans (pronounced Ami-CAH-blee-an, if you please; the accent on the third syllable - don’t be offended that I’ve told you how to pronounce the word because that’s what Amicableans do). In these last six years, Butcher and Amicable have changed. Not seismically, mind you, just tectonic plates shifting ever so gradually as time moves by.

During this, our second time together, as you meander through Amicable, you may find yourself connecting with specific characters and ways of thinking. This is entirely natural and wholly expected. Don’t fear it. Embrace these similarities, if you can.

All of us, every race, creed and stereotype have many things in common, not the least of which is that we all desire certain things: love, trust, acceptance, and a desire for moments of peace.

As such, we begin with an explosion.

You might be thinking to yourself, ‘Okay, I see what she’s doing here - she wants to start the story off with a bang, and we are left wondering whether this particular literary technique might be metaphorical or symbolic and I, the reader, must dig deeply into the metaphors and symbols…’ Let me pull the handbrakes on that train of thought right there and then and bring them to a screeching, spark-producing halt.

The explosion was real, a gigantic blast which scorched the heavens and shook the earth around Amicable.

Take a sip of your coffee. You might need it. It’s going to be a long day (or night) of reading.

Sincerely,

Leslie Deakins

Chapter 1.

If Enrique Fernandez could have lived just ten seconds longer, odds are he would have rued his decision to take up smoking. As it was, Enrique did not survive the blast. Perhaps it was for the best, though, because Enrique was under investigation by the Department of Immigration. Through turbulent seas and vomit-inducing swells, Enrique made his way from Cuba. On the sea voyage, some emigrants lost their lives where they were mourned in the deep orange sunlight of the ancient Caribbean Sea. Their loved ones looked out over bodies floating into the depths and held out an agonizing hope that if at least some of them – maybe only one – survived the journey, it would be worth it in the end.

Making his way into Miami, Little Cuba to be exact, where Enrique felt entirely at home, he was unfortunately, ferreted out by local drug lords to become a drug mule. Through a cleverness well beyond his sixteen years, he escaped their clutches and hitchhiked with other Hispanic vagabonds across the endless stretches of vibrant green hills and escarpments, which covered the Appalachian Mountains like a coniferous bristly beard. On his way northward, Enrique marveled at the expanse, and the variety, of the magnificent country of his dreams.

After being deposited in Evansville, Indiana, Enrique worked for a local building company, which was not particularly concerned where Enrique’s visa and passport were located. Their concern was that he work for just under the minimum wage – six dollars and ninety-five cents per hour. For Enrique, this was a fortune. In Cuba, he toiled for six dollars and ninety-five cents per day.

Oh, what a country! He blessed God for this fortuitous opportunity. Eventually, he would send for his mother where they could live in this most blessed of all American cities - Evansville.

Unfortunately, the building contractor for whom he worked was as negligent with making sure his worksites were safe as he was with checking immigration documents. One afternoon, Enrique and another co-worker, a Mexican man named Juan, were walking across the rooftop of a new building. Neither Enrique nor Juan noticed that someone had cut through the joist. Enrique was lucky. Though he fell over twelve feet to the floor below, he suffered only minor cuts and bruises. Juan, though, broke both legs. When he was taken to the hospital, the authorities found his immigration status suspect. Even as the bones in his legs were knitting back together, Juan was sent back to Mexico with a sharp reprimand and a ‘Don’t y’all come back now, y’hear.’

As Juan was taken away, Enrique wisely made sure that he was nowhere near Juan when the Feds came. Instead, Enrique thumbed a ride northwards on Highway 41, away from the South. Always farther away from Cuba.

Traveling north then west, Enrique met wonderful and fascinating people. Because of his rudimentary English, he depended on those he walked with. This, though, led to various problems. Once, he was pickpocketed the forty-seven dollars he’d accumulated on the journey. This caused Enrique ceaseless frustration, but again he came out lucky. His co-adventurer/pickpocket was stabbed by another kleptomaniacal malcontent, who had stooped to robbing illegal aliens.

With neither money nor connections, Enrique accepted a helping hand from a farmer on the outskirts of the Midwest, a generous corn grower in western Illinois. Alas, after the season finished, the farmer could no longer keep Enrique in his employ. In spite of a tremendous non-verbal relationship, Enrique was sent on his way, always north and west. Always away from Cuba. This time, though, the farmer’s wife, a blessedly small woman with thin hips and a penchant to wear flower print blouses and blue jeans, loaded up a backpack full of sundries and food. Fussing over him like parents sending a child off to kindergarten, they pulled up his jacket collar, ruffled his hair and waved to him as the bus drove away.

The wheels of the bus purred underneath the passengers all the way into Iowa’s capital city. Enrique, entranced by the rural landscape so incredibly different from his homeland, smiled broadly as he disembarked. There was something devastatingly beautiful about the shift from fall and to winter, from autumn leaves to crystalline, glittering snow.

Eventually, the bus dropped off Enrique and his small backpack in Des Moines. Even though he had tried to conserve his meager supplies, his backpack was now less than half-full. As he took his first steps into the icy bus terminal of Des Moines, he found that he had a choice to make. In retrospect, he should have refused the cigarette from the homeless man at the bus stop. The homeless man cupped a lighter in his hands around the cigarette. The flick of the lighter made a scratching sound and, after handing the lit cigarette to the young Cuban, Enrique drew in a breath of smoke that made him cough.

The homeless man laughed. They’ll be the death of you, he croaked.

-

On the day that Enrique died, he was unaware that a wedding was taking place at St. Clements Church. On that fateful Saturday afternoon, Enrique needed a break. Feeling the urge for a nicotine fix, Enrique took a pack of smokes from his chest pocket, a pocket embroidered with his name holding two pens, and tapped a cigarette from the opening.

On that fateful day, Enrique forgot the rules.

He had survived the treacherous journey across the turbulent Caribbean Sea; he had lived through the desperation of the Miami drug scene; he had escaped with just scratches after falling through a ceiling.

After all of this, Enrique thought himself a particularly fortunate person.

Ironically, though, on the day that Enrique died, simple flint and fluid ended all of Enrique’s good fortune.

A grain elevator was an incredibly bad location to have an open flame.

More often than not, what finally gets you is not what you see, but what you can’t. As the corn and soybeans were dumped into the grate and weighed, dust particles flew up and out. In and of themselves, these dust particles were not particularly flammable, but strangely, when placed into a compressed space, they are highly combustible. Thus, the NO OPEN FLAMES signs on every possible door and window.

Unfortunately, Enrique happened to be in the wrong place at the wrong time doing exactly the wrong thing. The striking of Enrique’s lighter caused the dust in the elevator to ignite and the ensuing explosion could be felt for miles around, not just at the wedding (four blocks away, mind you). The blast leveled multiple silos of the Amicable elevator, killing the young Cuban-American survivor who pretty much assumed he was the luckiest man in the world.

Lucky, that is, until he wasn’t.

-

Similarly, every community has combustible dust particles floating imperceptibly between neighbors and nutcases. These bits of gossip, harmless as day-to-day monotonies transpired, were highly combustible during the hectic times, planting and reaping, when the pressure ratcheted up. After planting and reaping lulls, deep winter, and summer haze, these times were ideal for other things like the wedding between Nash Peterson and Shania Zellner. Those in attendance were brim-full of goodwill for the couple.

St. Clements was bright and airy, warm and packed with Amicableans expecting a beautiful wedding and raucous reception. The aisle between the church pews was adorned with white ribbons and sprigs of green. Candles were lit and organ music floated in the background. Various citizens, dressed in their Sunday finest, waited with anticipation for the bride to be escorted down the aisle. A diminutive flower girl, dressed in pastel pink with accompanying bow, had strewn white rose petals along the purple carpet. As Shania walked gracefully, hand tucked delicately inside her father’s elbow, tears filled both sets of eyes. Tears were the sacrifice of the joyful.

At the front of the church, the groomsmen and their female counterparts, stood watching the procession. It was cute to watch both pageboy and flower girl, but it was breathtaking to watch the bride make her way to the front. Nash Peterson watched lovingly as his fiancée was ushered by his soon-to-be-father-in-law, but Nash couldn’t look at him – only her.

As Nash gazed at Shania, he couldn’t focus on any other part of the wedding service, including the carefully crafted homily delivered by the Reverend John Thomas Deakins, who stood regally in his black, ill-fitting suit and blue tie. Nash would have missed the vows if not for the timely nudge by his identical twin brother, Derek, and his whisper, Hey, Buttfuzz, you need to promise a few things now…

Butcher stood next to Derek sagely supervising the scene. He smiled at the two young men standing next to each other. As identical twins, their appearances were almost perfect reflections, but their personalities were not. Even in the earliest moments of Butcher’s arrival in Amicable, Butcher had noticed the small differences between the boys.

Butcher, imbued with an inscrutable and insufferable gift of reading people, was able to interpret the tiniest verbal and non-verbal signals, tell signs, as it were, and within seconds be able to know who they were, who they had been and, with a reasonable degree of certainty, who they would become. When he first encountered Nash and Derek, Nash, the older brother by less than half an hour, seemed more assertive and controlled. Derek, on the other hand, was wildly unpredictable. Using his gift, Butcher had assisted the Peterson twins in their own navigation through life. Because the twins’ parents were often out of town, Butcher, though only fifteen-odd years older, had become a surrogate father to them.

Do you, Shania Zellner, take Nash Peterson to be your lawfully wedded husband, for better for worse, for richer for poorer, in sickness and in health as long as you both shall live? Shania nodded to the pastor, who smiled at her and then she turned to her betrothed. I do.

And do you, Nash Peterson, take Shania Zellner to be your lawfully wedded wife, for better for worse, for richer for poorer, in sickness and in health as long as you both shall live? Nash took a deep breath, but before he could respond with all the love and excitement he had…

Boom.

-

The explosion sounded ominously like a detonation. Eight-year-old Ethan Thompson, who had been fidgeting miserably during the wedding ceremony pretending to be anywhere but in the middle of church on a Saturday afternoon, looked up at his mother. His frightened eyes were wide and his head ducked unconsciously. Have terrorists come to attack us, Mom?

Shaking her head but looking around concernedly nonetheless, Denise Thompson reassured her son by pulling him close. No, Sweetie, terrorists would have no reason to bomb Amicable. Clancy, maybe, but not Amicable.

The entire assembly looked around the church as the aftershock of the Elevator explosion rattled the stained-glass windows. Dust bunnies, perpetually perched in the rafters, excitedly hopped down through the diffused light, causing both wedding party and wedding guests to look skyward to see if Chicken Little’s prognostication would come to fruition.

A large chunk of cement crashed to the earth just outside the front doors of the church, startling both the ushers and the church cleaner, who had been picking his nails waiting for the service to finish.

The piece of concrete, roughly four feet long and two feet thick, weighing almost two hundred pounds, cratered the sidewalk.

Holy crap! the janitor exclaimed. What was that?

Tina, one of the ushers, hurried to the front glass double doors where, peering through the Methodist Church logo, noticed other bits and pieces of debris falling from the sky. I think a plane blew up in midair over us!

Pete the janitor hustled to her side and shook his head. Unless they’ve started making airplanes out of concrete, I think you might be wrong there.

Well, what do you think it is?

Pete stuck his head out the door and inhaled sharply. This is way worse than a plane crash. He covered his mouth and pointed to the southern ‘skyline’ of Amicable where a large black cloud billowed from the top of what used to be the Amicable grain elevator.

Inside the sanctuary, fifteen phones began to vibrate simultaneously including those belonging to all three groomsmen, groom and preacher. Intuitively, Butcher knew what had happened. Somewhere deep down in his soul he knew that the heart of Amicable, the elevator, with its ages of wear and tear, had suffered a coronary.

As the members of the volunteer fire brigade and emergency medical services stood in unison, Nash leaned across to his panic-stricken bride. I do, he said loudly enough for all who were still listening. I’ll see you in a few minutes. He kissed her deeply and moved off with the other volunteers as they hurried out the door.

The time between Nash’s departure and the reunion with his bride was at twelve hours. So much for the wedding reception.

Worship services were cancelled at St. Clements Methodist Church the next day. Normally, the only time worship was written off was when there was a cold snap in January or February. If the furnace couldn’t keep up, the Amicableans were allowed a reprieve from their weekly, and dutiful, worship to God. Instead, Leslie Deakins sent a message to the congregation members informing them that there would be a meeting at the bowling alley that night for communal commiseration, mutual encouragement and prayer. The bowling alley, with its enclosed bar, the Greedy Pecker (which would have been the site of Shania and Nash’s reception) served as the secular wing of community gatherings. John and Leslie both knew that the bowling alley would be packed, so in the communique, they asked that attendees bring a potluck dish to share. More often than not, there were many more than twelve baskets of food left over.

John, after returning home from his firefighting duties, ruefully glanced down at his ruined suit pants. Because of the emergency, none of the volunteer workers had time to change their clothes in order to fight fires, treat the injured and begin clearing dangerous objects. Anyone who happened upon the scene would have seen firefighters shedding three-piece suits, ambulance workers in ties and dress pants and the lone police officer, Louise Nelson, in a beautifully flowered dress. But that was the life of small town Midwest – everyone did their part.

Volunteering was a way of life, and in that life, sometimes there were interruptions. Rarely were they large. A few traffic accidents and the random cardiac, but nothing like this.

After taking a shower, Deakins fell into bed next to Leslie, who hadn’t slept a wink. It was almost five o’clock in the morning and the sun was peeking through the curtains already.

How bad was it? she whispered.

Deakins rolled onto his back and threw a forearm across his eyes. Horrific. Three dead, four seriously wounded and countless damage to the shops and houses on the south side of town.

Leslie attempted to stifle her gasp, but failed. Who…?

Carl Adams. Poor man, he was sitting in his tractor waiting to dump his load of beans. Might have been asleep, but the fire… John’s voice caught. "Deanne Bauer. She must have been driving on highway 10 when the explosion occurred. The nearest we could guess was that she was on her phone attempting to record the aftermath. She must have stopped too close to the intersection of Highway 10 and Gifford Street.

A semi driver didn’t see the car and took her out. Then, Enrique…" By speaking the Cuban’s name, John’s voice and body began to shake.

Leslie rolled into her husband. Oh, John, I’m so sorry.

They slept fitfully. At seven o’clock, the girls, unaware of the turmoil happening around them in the world, peeked precociously through the door to see if their parents were awake. Still blissfully unconscious, John and Leslie were startled awake by the two-five-year-olds pounding on the side of the bed demanding breakfast and entertainment. Groaning, John felt every last one of his overexerted muscles. His body complained miserably and reminded him that if he was going to take this volunteer firefighting role more seriously, he’d better learn to be a little more active than simply marching briskly across the parking lot to the church from the parsonage.

Leslie, showing concern for her husband, tapped him on the chest. I’ll take care of it.

Without opening his eyes, he felt for her hand. Coffee. Black. Gallon.

She smiled, pulled herself from the bed and made her way to the kitchen, holding her daughters’ hands in her own.

When John eventually appeared at the breakfast table, he arrived haggard; a beard, dark and shadowy, arising from nowhere, made him look ten years older. Eyes, circled by dark rings, reminded them of the darkness, which had occurred and the uncertainty of what was to come.

Daddy, what was that big noise yesterday? Gabrielle asked as she stuffed a piece of fluffy pancake into her mouth.

Use your fork, Sweetie, John said. Gabrielle nodded gravely and did as she was told while Michelle, noticing that she, too, was eating with syrupy fingers, followed her father’s advice. There was an explosion at the elevator.

What’s a espluxion?

John smiled ruefully. An explosion. It means that something blows up and goes boom.

Boom, Michelle repeated.

What went boom? Gabi asked.

You know, the big building, the one with all the big round bins.

Oh, Gabi responded slowly as if understanding, but her mind had already moved on to the shape that was forming on her breakfast plate.

So, what do we have to do today? Leslie asked John as she placed a pancake and coffee in front of him.

The Emergency Team is going to meet again at lunch time. The crews from Clancy and surrounding towns arrived, so we cycled through the night. Some of the guys have now been working for six to eight hours straight. I’m glad that I wasn’t on the crew that helped with Enrique.

John sipped and continued. "My guess is that we’ll need time to clear the debris, then take inventory of where Amicable goes from here.

My job will get a little more difficult considering the three funerals coming up…" his voice trailed off.

Leslie put her arms around his shoulders from behind. We’ll do this together.

At five o’clock that night, the bowling alley opened its doors and townspeople shuffled quietly inside. Some of them numb to the core, wondering how things could get any worse, stumbled directly to the bar where they were offered a drink by the newest married woman in Amicable, Shania Peterson. Although the wedding ceremony had not officially been completed by Reverend Deakins, both Shania and Nash had verbalized their vows, leaving only the formality of Deakins’ pronouncement of marriage unspoken.

Nash and Derek sat at a bar table staring morosely up at a football game on television. Fans with heads covered by triangles of foam cheese cheered loudly. Nash felt a twinge of resentment for the happy faces, blissfully unconscious to the pain in Amicable.

Shania, can you turn the music on and the TV off ? Nash asked quietly. She nodded and pointed the remote at the television. It blinked off, leaving a momentary vision of dust settling into black.

More and more people straggled in to the bowling alley. As they did, potluck dishes were deposited on plastic tables. Carefully wrapped salads and Jell-O molds were separated from casseroles and meat dishes and placed opposite the brownies and cakes. A few townspeople brought extra food for the emergency medical personnel who had worked fastidiously through the night. No one was bowling and the pinball machines had been turned off.

As they sifted through the details, they also worked through their shock and grief. An hour into the night, the first burst of laughter erupted. Guiltily, James Thompson glanced around the room hoping that he hadn’t been disrespectful, but the others smiled at him,